I continue to be amazed by the many, many shirt-tail kin in my family. I recently came across this photograph of the Loder Family of Waverly, Nebraska.

My connection to the family is through Henrietta Loder Beale, daughter of William Alexander Loder in the photograph above. To me, to my mother and my mother's siblings, she was always "Aunt Etty." Technically, she was a cousin of my grandmother's (Sina Harriet Bellinger Kelly - her mother was a Landon) via the Landon line. Since Sina had no sisters, Etty told Sina's children, "I'll be your Aunt Etty." And so she was.

Throughout her life, I absolutely adored Aunt Etty. It seemed to me that she had traveled everywhere and seemed so worldly and exotic. I still treasure the beautiful (now antique) turquoise and silver bracelet and matching earrings that she brought back from Mexico so many years ago. She passed them on to my mother who passed them on to me. As a youngster, I loved visiting her and her husband, "Uncle Hub" - Ralph M. Beale. Uncle Hub had these amazing scrapbooks on world events, newspaper clippings, that he started when he was a child himself. There must have been 10 to 15 volumes by the time I discovered this treasure in the early 1960s. Gotta say, I was pretty impressed that his scrapbook included some newspaper clippings about The Beatles. Aunt Etty would tell my mom (Patricia Kelly in the photo below) that Hub loved it when I came to visit because I was the only one of the kids who was interested in his scrapbooks and his stories of the olden days. Hub ALWAYS had to tell a story about when he was in Honduras.

If only..... if only I could visit with them about their memories today....